Monday, November 26, 2001

Well. It’s time for me to start becoming me.

By that, I mean that I have a pretty high standard for myself, and I haven’t been living up to it. The problem is that, while I know which habits I’d like to have, once I start following those habits, I quickly fool myself into thinking that I’m totally faithful to those habits. I begin to slack off, because in my mind, I’m still faithful.

So. I have my schedule. Why don’t I stick to it? I’m going to start sticking to it. No more excuses. If some part of my schedule doesn’t work, I’ll change it, but I’m going to at least do it.

Fine, enough of that.

I’ve been reading E. E. “Doc” Smith’s last book, Subspace Encounter. Smith invented the space opera, and this is a wonderful example of same. It’s lots of fun, and this is what I’ve needed, I think, to get back into reading. I’ve needed something that I’ll just love to dive into, if only for a few pages.

“Millions of starships, planet-devouring negaspheres, ‘beams of lambent energy,’ ‘cones of destruction,’ hyper-spatial tubes, millenia-old beings of pure intellect and limitless psionic powers, whole galaxies wracked by war… these were the stuff and the scale on which Doc Smith wrote, and thumping good it was. Very few of the writers who have followed in Smith’s footsteps have matched his scale and inventiveness; none have matched his singlehanded impact on his genre.”
— David Weber

Meanwhile, Saalon‘s finishing up his Defiant script, so that he can focus on writing preliminary stuff for Wine. I just hope he won’t burn himself out; this is a lot of writing to do.

Speaking of which, I’m getting in the mood to write. I’ve nothing special in mind; perhaps just a scene or three, to stretch my (horribly atrophied) writing muscles.

I’ve been somewhat inspired to write by Doc Smith himself. He could invent whole worlds and societies off the cuff, because he understood the balance between believability, coolness, and a good story. A novel could introduce a patently silly social concept, which wouldn’t matter because it was cool. Or, because the story was interesting. He didn’t worry about High Literary Achievement; he wrote about knife duels because they were cool.

Why can’t I?

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